Under Western Eyes eBook

PART FIRST

To begin with I wish to disclaim the possession of
those high gifts of imagination and expression which
would have enabled my pen to create for the reader
the personality of the man who called himself, after
the Russian custom, Cyril son of Isidor—­Kirylo
Sidorovitch—­Razumov.

If I have ever had these gifts in any sort of living
form they have been smothered out of existence a long
time ago under a wilderness of words. Words,
as is well known, are the great foes of reality.
I have been for many years a teacher of languages.
It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal
to whatever share of imagination, observation, and
insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To
a teacher of languages there comes a time when the
world is but a place of many words and man appears
a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than
a parrot.

This being so, I could not have observed Mr. Razumov
or guessed at his reality by the force of insight,
much less have imagined him as he was. Even to
invent the mere bald facts of his life would have been
utterly beyond my powers. But I think that without
this declaration the readers of these pages will be
able to detect in the story the marks of documentary
evidence. And that is perfectly correct.
It is based on a document; all I have brought to it
is my knowledge of the Russian language, which is
sufficient for what is attempted here. The document,
of course, is something in the nature of a journal,
a diary, yet not exactly that in its actual form.
For instance, most of it was not written up from day
to day, though all the entries are dated. Some
of these entries cover months of time and extend over
dozens of pages. All the earlier part is a retrospect,
in a narrative form, relating to an event which took
place about a year before.

I must mention that I have lived for a long time in
Geneva. A whole quarter of that town, on account
of many Russians residing there, is called La Petite
Russie—­Little Russia. I had a rather
extensive connexion in Little Russia at that time.
Yet I confess that I have no comprehension of the
Russian character. The illogicality of their
attitude, the arbitrariness of their conclusions, the
frequency of the exceptional, should present no difficulty
to a student of many grammars; but there must be something
else in the way, some special human trait—­one
of those subtle differences that are beyond the ken
of mere professors. What must remain striking
to a teacher of languages is the Russians’ extraordinary
love of words. They gather them up; they cherish
them, but they don’t hoard them in their breasts;
on the contrary, they are always ready to pour them
out by the hour or by the night with an enthusiasm,
a sweeping abundance, with such an aptness of application
sometimes that, as in the case of very accomplished
parrots, one can’t defend oneself from the suspicion
that they really understand what they say. There
is a generosity in their ardour of speech which removes
it as far as possible from common loquacity; and it
is ever too disconnected to be classed as eloquence....
But I must apologize for this digression.